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A Gambling Town Bets a Museum Can Compete

BILOXI, Miss. — Just months before a quirky little museum designed by the architect Frank Gehry was set to open in this Gulf Coast resort town, the waves from Hurricane Katrina lifted a three-story floating casino, slot machines and all, and slammed it into the project.

It might have dropped straight out of a Mark Twain story, like the steamboat that crushed Huck Finn’s raft.

Now, after years of struggle, the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art officially opened on Monday. And the casinos that make $800 million a year in Biloxi are among the chief angels of its recovery.

Gambling companies have pumped millions into the rebuilding effort. In exchange, students of art and of Mr. Gehry will wander through the IP Casino Resort & Spa Exhibitions Gallery and a center for African-American art named after the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino.

The nature of the sponsorship, along with the flat-out surprise of a Gehry-designed building on this stretch of beach between Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans, raises the larger question: Can gambling and art mix in the Redneck Riviera?

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The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi officially opened on Monday.Credit
Jeff Haller for The New York Times

“We have no template for this kind of museum,” said Denny Mecham, the museum’s executive director, who believes the museum will revive appreciation for the cultural heritage of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

At its heart is a collection of fancifully glazed ceramics by George Ohr, the self-described “mad potter of Biloxi” who died in 1918. Art critics and historians regard him as a forerunner of the American modern art movement.

The need for something more than slot machines and blackjack is not lost on hospitality and gambling executives here, who acknowledge that keeping people in the casino for as long as possible is not the best strategy if Biloxi is to thrive as something more than a gambling town with really good fishing.

“We knew you had to sell them on Biloxi before you could sell them on Beau Rivage,” said Mary Cracchiolo Spain, who handles public relations in Mississippi for MGM, owner of the Beau Rivage. “The tourism piece is the glue between the art world and the gaming community.”

Museum officials estimate that 100,000 nongamblers might be drawn here each year simply on the power of Mr. Gehry’s curving brickwork and twisting stainless steel structures. They are betting on what has come to be known as the “Bilbao effect.” When Mr. Gehry’s massive, titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum opened in Bilbao, Spain, in 1997, thousands of art tourists helped revive that dying industrial town.

Later buildings by Mr. Gehry have not had the same effect.

Few here believe that selling art and architecture in a city of 50,000 will be easy. Other high-minded cultural institutions are few.

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The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art was under construction when it was badly damaged in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.Credit
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

The museum, which has opened three of what will eventually be five connected structures, could cost as much as $45 million. In addition to help from the gambling industry, the bill will be paid with a mix of insurance and government money, grants that include $3 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and private benefactors like Jeremiah O’Keefe, a former mayor.

The City of Biloxi, which donated the four acres on which the museum sits, modified its initial pledge after the hurricane. Priorities had to shift to social services and rebuilding.

“Supporting a museum is not going to be high on our list, particularly when a museum that started out to be an endeavor of about $9 or $10 million before Katrina is going to be a museum of $40 to $45 million,” said Vincent Creel, the spokesman for the city.

“On the other hand,” Mr. Creel said, “we realize a Frank Gehry museum is going to put us on the cultural map.”

Many Biloxi residents, who have followed the museum’s 12-year odyssey with not a small amount of skepticism, were hopeful.

“When they were building it and they had those ugly pods everywhere, you couldn’t see the vision,” said Carolyn Perry, a retired special-education teacher. “Now that it’s together, you can see what it will do for this community. It’s just a jewel.”

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On Friday, Gisela and Peter Farer got an early tour from Julie Gustafson, center.Credit
Jeff Haller for The New York Times

Those pods — four supersized, twisted steel eggs that will hold small galleries filled with Mr. Ohr’s pottery — became the buildings Biloxi loved to hate. People describe them variously as giant crushed beer cans, grain silos and spaceships.

Even the longtime mayor, A. J. Holloway, makes fun of them. But, Mr. Holloway concedes: “I don’t know art. I’m a jock.” (Mr. Holloway made a name for himself on the University of Mississippi football field.)

Mr. Gehry was persuaded to do the project after the mayor, Mr. O’Keefe and other museum supporters traveled to Los Angeles to lobby him shortly after the Guggenheim opened in Spain. He realizes that not everyone will immediately understand his vision, and that his modest buildings tucked among ancient live oaks may not have the immediate impact of structures like the Guggenheim or his undulating Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

“Nobody’s going to get it until they come here,” Mr. Gehry said in an interview.

Mr. Gehry said he had long been inspired by Mr. Ohr’s pottery, and he even has a little gambling in his family.

“When I was a kid, my father was in the slot machine business,” Mr. Gehry said.

For gamblers, however, the connection might not be enough. Despite posters in the hallways and a display of Ohr pots at a Beau Rivage gift shop, news of Mr. Gehry’s museum had not penetrated the depths of the casino last weekend.

“I haven’t heard a word about it,” said Lois Allison, 69, who had traveled on a charter from Leesville, S.C., and was enjoying a modest amount of success at the Cash Wheel quarter machine.

“I came here to gamble,” Ms. Allison said, “and I shouldn’t even do that.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 9, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: BILOXI JOURNAL; Gambling Town Bets Heavily On a Gehry-Designed Museum. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe